Monitoring breast cancer treatment progress with microwave tomography and radar-based tissue-regions estimation

Microwave imaging has been proposed as a complementary method for breast imaging, as it is sensitive to the electrical properties of tissues, potentially providing additional information when used in conjunction with clinical imaging modalities. This implies that it may be used to distinguish constituent tissue types and identify malignant tumors embedded in healthy fibroglandular tissue. Several pilot studies have examined microwave imaging for detection of tumors, demonstrating the potential to detect tumors of 1 cm diameter and greater. Microwave imaging is also well suited for the repeated imaging required to monitor changes during breast cancer treatment, as this relatively inexpensive technology does not require exposure to ionizing radiation or contrast agents. Two techniques that exploit imaging at microwave frequencies are radar-based imaging and microwave tomography (MWT). A combined radar/MWT approach is presented as a method for monitoring tumor size changes to assess treatment progress.